


Saving the Child

by yourlibrarian



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Episode: s05e22 Not Fade Away, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 17:48:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6714880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It always seemed significant to me that Spike’s final task was to save a baby in the AtS finale, I just wasn’t sure why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saving the Child

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted March 20, 2005

it always seemed significant to me that Spike’s final task was to save a baby in the AtS finale, I just wasn’t sure why. For what it’s worth, here’s a possibility for consideration. 

Each character was performing a task to which their arc was uniquely suited.

Gunn’s role was direct and uncomplicated, rather like the character originally appeared. He returned to dusting vamps.

Lorne, who was not a fighter and stayed in this dimension because he so loved the culture, adapted its gun culture in regards to a character whose future he was uniquely able to know (“I’ve heard you sing.”) It was Lorne who brought together Angel and Lindsey in their final partnership before Lindsay’s departure, and now he ensured Lindsey would stay behind as he departed.

The Angelus that Sebassis so admired used his history of artistry and cunning in destroying his enemy, while Angel (and, mirroring the indirectness of his own responsibility, Connor) faced the embodiment of his 5-season nemesis, Wolfram & Hart, by destroying Hamilton.

Illyria, a new character we’d barely come to know, destroyed members of the Circle we’d only seen in passing or not at all. Neither side had had much of an arc yet.

Wes’ lifelong training as a once and now renewed Watcher was put into practice against Vail. Significantly, he was the only character who didn’t complete his task. He failed yet again as he had at every stage in his character’s development, from his original appearance in S3 of BtVS; his first season with Angel as a less-than-successful Rogue Demon Hunter who had yet another unsuccessful encounter with his Slayer; his (debatably) less-than-successful venture as the leader of Team Angel, a role Angel told him he could keep, and which in a very short time he was elbowed aside from; his memorable error in judgment of kidnapping Connor; his error in convincing Team Angel to bring forth Angelus; to his final error, breaking Vail’s Orlon cube in a failed attempt to restore Fred.

Which brings us to Spike. Even though Spike himself has had moments of notable failure, he succeeded in his champion’s task. Given the Fell Brotherhood’s claim in “Time Bomb” that “The Fell are everywhere. We are a force of nature,” Spike must have been quite a busy boy ensuring some remaining members wouldn’t just take the child back again, hmm? We’ll have to assume that like all good villains they had delusions of grandeur.

I felt the baby represented two things –- Spike’s unique character and the legacy of the Shansu which, however improbably, we are led to believe Angel will no longer receive. Despite Spike’s considerable age, the seriousness he’s in the early stages of developing as a result of his soul, and his grisly past, Spike is ever the youngster. He was the youngest of his vampiric family, he has always played the younger brother to Angel’s elder, and he spent his last day returning to his dreamy, naïve youth by reciting a poem you’d think that he’d not only long forgotten, but would have been only too eager to forget. And, of course, his attitude remains in many ways, forever juvenile, which is one reason he’s so much fun to watch. Spike is a symbol of hope -- that evil can change, not by happenstance, but by deliberate action.

The other thing I was prompted to recall was that babies have, several times on AtS, been linked to great destiny. When Angel attempted to return to Darla, she insisted he kill a baby, and he realized once and for all he could never return to his old path. He escaped with the baby and started out in his own long journey to redemption. Later in S2, Angel fights as a champion for a pregnant woman whose baby is foretold to be a great seer, a Joan of Arc. There’s Cordy’s baby Jasmine of which the less said, perhaps, the better, but certainly an object of world-changing destiny. Then of course we have Connor, who is, as has been discussed in different places, a possible living embodiment of Angel’s shansu, allowing Angel to die and yet live as any mortal would, through their progeny.

So the baby Spike rescues is, as far as the Fell are concerned, an object of reverence and sacrifice, much like any champion. Like the others, Spike kills demons but this is a side effect of his task. His central purpose is to rescue the baby and ensure it has a normal life with its human parents, not unlike what Angel himself did at the end of S4. So the baby could symbolize the shansu in Spike's future. Of course, even assuming Spike survives the final battle, he’s unlikely to ever have any progeny of his own. The baby might, in some ways, be more than just a symbolic legacy for Spike. Given that it’s just a newborn (he wasn’t born yet in “Time Bomb” and just 4 episodes later he was already with the Fell), who’s to say his parents have named him yet? Maybe those grateful parents decided to give him the name of his rescuer -- William.


End file.
